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Friday, July 21, 2017

The total number of crimes recorded by police in England and Wales rose
by 10 per cent between March 2016 and March 2017, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

That’s the biggest annual increase in a decade, and it comes after years
of cuts that have seen police numbers fall by 20,000 since 2010 (which
we subjected to the FactCheck treatment earlier this year).
In April, the assistant commissioner at the Metropolitan Police,
Martin Hewitt, said ‘it would be a naive answer to say that if you cut a
significant amount out of an organisation, you don’t have any
consequences’.

But is there strong evidence that austerity played a role?
FactCheck investigates.

The number of recorded crimes has risen since austerity began

The police recorded nearly 5 million offences in the 12 months up to
March 2017 – a 10 per cent increase from the previous year. We haven’t
seen such a sharp spike for over a decade.

Between 2004 and 2010, the number of crimes recorded by police in
England and Wales each year was falling. The coalition’s spending cuts
started to take effect in 2011, and since then, crime rates have crept
up. They’re not as high as they were in 2003-4 (when total recorded
crimes were at 6 million), but they’re on their way.

Are there genuinely more crimes, or are police just better at recording them?

Successive governments have tried to get police forces to record the
true extent of crimes for years. Forces came under renewed pressure in
2014 after the UK Statistics Authority stripped them of their ‘official
statistics’ status.

Since then, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary has been carrying
out spot-checks, and has said that many forces still need to improve
their recording practices.

You might think then, that today’s figures simply show that the police
are responding to this pressure, and getting better at reporting crimes.

That’s been true in previous years, but it doesn’t quite explain what’s happened this year.
John Flatley from the ONS said that ‘while ongoing improvements to
recording practices are driving this volume rise [in the number of
recorded crimes], we believe actual increases in crime are also a factor
in a number of categories’.

In other words, the police are getting better at recording crime, but the number of crimes is also going up.

Are crime rates linked to police officer numbers?

When you compare the year-on-year changes in police numbers with the
number of recorded crimes in England and Wales, it’s difficult to see a
strong statistical link. For example, officer numbers rose between 2008
and 2009, but reported crimes fell in the same period.
This is shown in the graph below, which uses data from the ONS.

Police records are not the only – or necessarily the best – way to measure crime

It’s also worth remembering that the crimes recorded by the police are not the only way we measure crime.

The ONS also uses the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) to
estimate the number of crimes each year. The Survey – conducted by the
ONS – interviews a representative sample of the population to ask if
they’ve experienced crime in the last 12 months.

Interestingly, this year’s Survey showed a 7 per cent fall in the total
number of crimes in England and Wales, despite the 10 per cent rise in
crimes recorded by the police.

Although the Survey estimated that there were 5.9 million incidents of crime this year – 900,000 more than the police recorded.

So why are the two figures different?

First of all, the Survey results are an estimate based on a sample size
of the population, whereas police records – in theory – should
accurately account for every single case of recordable crime.

They also measure different types of crime. The Survey does not include
crimes against businesses and organisations, and excludes so-called
‘victimless’ crimes like possession of drugs.

The Survey may also estimate a higher number of crimes each year because
it includes crimes that were never reported to the police.

FactCheck verdictIt’s true that there are 20,000 fewer
police officers on the streets than there were when austerity began.
It’s also true that crime rates have risen over that period.But some of that rise is because the police
have got better at recording crimes. And police records are not
necessarily the best measure of crime rates in England and Wales. The
Crime Survey says that crime has actually fallen by 7 per cent this
year.Ultimately, it’s very hard to tell whether austerity has led to more crime.